Former Defund the Police attorney Mayor Lori Lightfoot has a secret group of Chicago cops called Unit 544 that she, along with her bodyguards, turns out to be protecting.
The unit, made up of 65 officers, five sergeants and a lieutenant, provides round-the-clock protection for the city’s mayor along with her bodyguard detail of about 20 men, the Chicago Sun Times revealed, citing city records.
The revelation comes as crime in the Windy City has soared to frightening new rates not seen in half a decade and after Lightfoot proposed a whopping $80 million in 2020 during the Defund the Police protests from the Chicago Police Department’s budget.
The proposal was later scaled back, cutting 3.33 percent of the budget — or $59 million.
It also comes amid news that 660 police officers were retiring in 2021 – almost double the number in 2018. The mass retirements came in the same year Lightfoot announced a Covid-19 vaccine mandate for city employees.
Lightfoot, 59, has since denounced the movement and in December asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to send alcohol, tobacco and firearms agents to the city for six months after the city’s homicide rate soared to a 25-year high.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a former Defund the Police attorney, has a secret group of Chicago police officers called Unit 544 who she and her bodyguards protect, city records show
The Chicago Sun Times reports that in July 2020, at the height of the crime spree unleashed by the pandemic, a memo was sent to Chicago officials informing them they were about to form the Task Force on the… unit could apply.
It read: “The task of the unit will be to provide physical protection for City Hall, the Mayor’s Residence and the Mayor’s Command Post.
“By coordinating intelligence and resources, officers will respond to any threats related to the mayor’s physical attributes to ensure his protection.”
Officials running for the mayor’s post had to have served at least five years to be eligible, according to the Times.
Requirements for the position included “experience providing security and property protection services,” according to the paper.
Despite the stipulations, officers who have since been accepted in Lightfoot’s personal outfit were not required to complete any extracurricular training for the appearance, CPD officials told the Times Monday.
Shortly before the unit was established, Lightfoot, who had been criticized by protesting citizens and even officials for her ties to the then rapidly burgeoning anti-police movement, hired police officers from the Humboldt Park and Logan Square neighborhoods to stand guard in front of her serve posh multi-million dollar home.
The revelation comes as crime in the Windy City has soared to frightening new rates not seen in half a decade and after Lightfoot proposed a whopping $80 million in 2020 during the Defund the Police protests from the Chicago Police Department’s budget
Citizens from the neighborhoods soon noticed how thin the police force had become in their areas and complained to the city, the Times reported, as crime in the city spiked amid lockdowns and economic uncertainty sparked by the then-rampant coronavirus. started to rise.
In an interview with the Times, Lightfoot said the decision to enlist able-bodied officers from the city’s struggling force — already thinned out by the pandemic — for its specialized bodyguard detail had nothing to do with criticism it was facing for its previous use the city was exposed to officers as security.
“There was no unified command over the [officers] who were in the town hall, with me and with me [bodyguard] Detail,” said the Democrat, who moved to Chicago when he was 24.
“The first floor of City Hall was a chain of command, the second floor was another chain of command, the fifth floor [where the mayor’s office is located] was a different chain of command, the house was different and the [bodyguard] Detail was different,” she explained.
“We thought, and that was way before the protests or anything else, it just didn’t make sense. Because you know, if there was an emergency at City Hall, for example, the right hand wouldn’t necessarily know what the left was doing because they were all under different chains of command,’ Lightfoot said.
The mayor then brought up how citizens protesting her involvement in the Defund the Police movement – which had soured the politician’s relationship with her city’s police force, along with her demand that all city employees, including police officers, be vaccinated – made her the target of repeated death threats.
“And then obviously, especially in 2020, there was a significant amount of protests across the city and some of them targeted my house,” Lightfoot told the Times on Friday.
“That made it all the more important that having a unified command to understand and share information and be ready to respond if there was any type of threat was very important.”
Years later, violent crime is still rampant in Chicago, especially since before the start of the pandemic — less than a year after Lightfoot was sworn in in May 2019
The City of Chicago Police Department has been increasingly at odds with Lightfoot since its election – a Democrat who publicly supported the “Defund the Police Movement” following the death of George Floyd in 2020 and who trimmed the force’s budget by $59 million that same year. Dollar shortened in 2019.
Lightfoot has since denounced the “Defund the Police” movement, backing down in August after the death of police officer Ella French earlier in the month and unveiling a new plan to – ironically – “refund the police”.
The very next month, in September, Lightfoot unveiled a $16.7 billion spending plan on Monday that boosted the department’s funding and the Chicago Police Department’s annual budget of $1.7 billion in 2021 increased to $1.9 billion.
The plan relied on federal money to lift the city from a deficit that soared to $73 million during Lightfoot’s tenure, and outlined likely funding for new community programs that Lightfoot claimed were struggling troubled city will help overcome the ongoing pandemic and current issues of gun violence and crime.
At the time, Lightfoot told attendees at a conference discussing the proposed changes, “We need to make sure we continue to devote resources to recruiting the next generation of police officers and make sure we conduct that recruitment in a way that is reflective of the city’s diversity.” .”
Months later, violent crime is still rampant in Chicago, especially as the pandemic began — less than a year after Lightfoot was sworn in in May 2019.
According to the latest statistics from the Chicago Police Department, homicides are up a whopping 74 percent since 2019 — before the pandemic triggered an influx of crime onto the city’s streets — with 113 homicides recorded since the start of the year, compared to 2019’s 65 seen.
The number of homicides has also risen since 2020, during the peak of the pandemic, when 91 homicides were still worrying.
In 2021, the city’s homicide rate soared to a high not seen in a quarter of a century, reaching 116 homicides in the first three months of the year — just three more than this year.
Violent assaults are also on the rise, with more than 100 cases of aggravated assault taking place this year than in 2021.
Sexual assault and rape have also risen this year, with the city recording 12 more incidents this year than this time in 2021.
Petty crime, such as theft, has also risen by a whopping 68 percent from 1,871 to 3,149 incidents since last year.
Sexual assault and robbery are also on the rise, increasing by 3 and 11 percent, respectively.
Gun violence, arguably the city’s most pressing and prevalent problem, declined slightly, from 497 shootings last year to 449 so far in 2022.
However, compared to the shootings of 2019, before the city’s unprecedented crime spree, gun violence rates have risen astronomically by 56 percent.